Global Support for Israel’s Agriculture: Non-Jews Join Efforts to Boost Israeli Farms

A volunteer picks plums in Israel (photo by Gil Tanenbaum)

Ten people coming from nations all over the world sit waiting in the lobby of a downtown Jerusalem hotel at dawn on a hot July morning. Despite an unprecedented heatwave that blanketed the country, these American, British and Australian volunteers are still going strong at the end of a long and difficult week harvesting plums at Moshav Giv’ati in the south of Israel. They were brought to Israel by an organization called “Israel Food Rescue”

The volunteers, who traveled to Israel at their own expense, paid for the rooms in their hotel, a tourist hotel on King George Street right in the middle of downtown Jerusalem. There is no swimming pool there or any other amenities that travelers would expect from a nice hotel. Just rooms to sleep in, air-conditioned ones.

So, not only did these people donate their time performing hard work in the fields, they also helped the economy by staying in hotels at a time when the country is getting less than half of its normal rate of foreign tourism.

The lobby here is just a small area on the ground floor with a couch and some chairs opposite a small reception desk. The group is quiet and all are visibly tired as they have been working all week on the farm, getting up at dawn each day, with little time to catch their breath or get over their jetlag after arriving.

They set out at 6 AM on a one-hour ride to the farm where they will pick plums from the trees. They leave early in order to get most of their work done before the heat sets in at midday. But by 11 AM the temperature is already hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit – about 32 Celsius. The humidity this day will be over 60%.

It is already hot when the group sets out to clear the trees of their plums. The task is made all the more difficult by the fact that only the largest ones – at least the size of a billiard ball – are to be picked. This means searching through the branches for the ones to take. And at least half of those picked must be discarded because they are already damaged in some way. The lower parts of these trees have already been harvested.

So the people must climb or stretch high in order to get the plums that are left, about six feet above the ground. They do not have any ladders to aid them in this task, one made all the more difficult by the many branches blocking the way to the trees’ higher levels.

There is a boxed lunch about halfway through the day in a partially shaded area beside a pen where a single horse is kept. There is no coffee or anything like that during the break. There is a nearby water cooler. But the cold water that filled a large bottle became warm very quickly.

Two sisters, Naomi and Amanda Clark, traveled all the way from South Australia just to spend two weeks picking plums at the Moshav. They flew a total of almost 20 hours between two flights by way of Bangkok to get to Israel. The sisters are both high school teachers, teaching math and science. This is the second time since the October 7 massacre that they have made the long journey here to volunteer and they are not Jewish.

The volunteers package the plums at the end of a hard day’s work

So, why would these sisters make such a long and difficult journey halfway around the world at their own expense just to work on a farm for two weeks?

“We are both Christian and support the right of the Jewish people to live in their land,” said Naomi. “Absolutely! This is their land.”

When asked who of them is older, Amanda rushes to declare it is Naomi who is older, much to Naomi’s chagrin. “She’s so quick with that,” sighed Naomi as Amanda laughed.

This is actually their mid-winter vacation. They gave up two weeks of vacation from work to come to Israel and pick plums from trees.

It makes sense that an Australian would travel to somewhere warm like Israel to get away from the cold winter weather, just like how New Yorkers go down to Miami or the Caribbean for their winter vacations. But that is to spend time on the beach, not working in the fields.

‘The climate where we are is very similar to the climate here,” explained Naomi

Now is the harvest. When the sisters visited the country in January they planted crops like fennel and cauliflower.

They took 3 flights, including one in Australia

Naomi wears the dog tags that Israelis can be seen wearing all over the country in solidarity with the people held hostage by Hamas terrorists since October 7. They say in Hebrew and English “Bring them home now!”

Such volunteers continue to arrive in Israel every week, eleven months after the start of the war and in spite of the fact that most international airlines have canceled their flights to the country.